Blog: Update – 1

I put the title of the blog as “Blog: Update – 1” for three reasons. First reason being, it gives me a sense of satisfaction that I am acknowledging the fact I haven’t written a post for my blog for long; second, there is more than 1 update that I need to post here so more posts shall follow soon; and, the third reason is I am now very used to reading the “BP: Macondo Update…” reports regarding the recent oil spill in GoM published very frequently by the research desk I work for and so it is only natural I pick that up as the title of this post!

My days are spent reading about Oil and trying to figure how, in the broad scheme of things, it would help manage someone’s wealth; where as my evenings are spent trying to figure how to manage the Oil usage at home so my roommates and I keep good health!

I guess once you start working, the mind undergoes a certain conditioning, which is automatic and completely unintentional as well, but it sure happens. I realized this when I was sitting with a friend in Hard Rock Café the other evening. It was his last day in Hyderabad; his stint here as an intern had just ended. Digging into the hot melting dark chocolate on an unusually large piece of chocolate brownie, he was narrating his experiences at work. On the day of his final presentation, his boss asked him “how many hours in a day do you have?” and my friend blurted, “Eight, Sir!”. It did not occur to him, even for a moment that his boss could actually be referring to the total number of hours in a day! He thought of only the ideal number of working hours in a day and said 8 in all honesty.

The other I realized happened with my roommate. She works for a firm which leaves her with no life – both in terms of time and activity. In the first month of her job, she went to office on all Saturdays. She is supposed to have a five-day week but she never saw a relaxed Friday evening or a Saturday morning in that whole month. And then, one day she returned with the biggest grin on her face, announcing as happily as she could that the next day, a Saturday was going to be an off! But the whole of Saturday she kept repeating to us, “I feel this is Sunday!”, “I feel as if I need to go to office tomorrow!” or “I will feel weird when Sunday actually arrives tomorrow!”. Her mind is conditioned to have only one day off in a week – in just a month’s time!

And well, I did not escape the conditioning either!

Suddenly I find, the popular phrase “All is Well” has changed to “Oil’s Well” in my vocabulary. Humorous I know, but it is a certain inalienable truth of my life now!